MOSCOW – Shamil Basayev, the Chechen separatist leader who claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege and was viewed by Russian authorities as the country’s most wanted terrorist, was killed when a truck carrying dynamite blew up, Russian officials said Monday.
Basayev, who argued that Russian civilians were legitimate targets because they supported Moscow’s war against Chechen separatists, claimed responsibility for the 2004 Beslan siege, the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002 and the kidnapping of hostages at a hospital in Budyonnovsk in 1995 – incidents in which more than 600 people died.
Basayev was emblematic of the radicalization of the Chechen rebel movement – which began as a secular fight for independence – and its increasing domination by Islamic extremists.
The blast that killed Basayev, 41, who had a $10 million bounty on his head, appeared to have been an accident, according to regional officials.
The explosion took place during a special operation conducted in the village of Ekazhevo, in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, Russian media reported.
Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev told Interfax that Basayev had been sitting in one of several cars near the truck that exploded. The truck was said to have been carrying 220 pounds of dynamite.
Russia’s NTV said the significance of Basayev’s death for Russia was similar to what killing Osama bin Laden would mean for the United States.
The September 2004 takeover of the school in Beslan was particularly devastating to Russians. More than 300 hostages, about half of them children, were killed when Russian forces moved against a band of rebels who were holding the school staff, students and parents hostage.
“If he’s in fact the person who ordered the killing of children in Beslan, he deserved it,” President Bush said Monday about Basayev’s death.
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